The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide

As an e-commerce company, Alibaba is naturally interested in electronic payments. It has never engaged in electronic payments before. First, because it lacks the energy and has not yet established a firm foothold in Silicon Valley. Second, it needs to rely on NewPay to empower their business.

The current status quo is that everyone has to enter this field. The power of combining electronic payment and smartphones is obvious to all. Electronic coupons are issued through WeChat to provide support for brand promotion, marketing activities, discounts, etc. The effect is real.

Just by cultivating a closer emotional connection between enterprises and consumers through WeChat public accounts, corporate soft-text promotion, corporate regular event notifications, corporate coupon issuance, etc., electronic payment has played a role in various activities. One plus one is greater than two. effect.

Previously, NewPay did not open QR codes, but only engaged in computer payments. It lacked hot spots and was a field where the input-output cost performance was not that high. After NewPay opened its patents, this field was completely different.

First of all, electronic payment is an area that requires a lot of investment. Whether it is early customer acquisition costs or information security technology and electronic payment licenses, a lot of resources must be invested to get it started.

Therefore, only Internet companies of a certain scale or companies in traditional industries can do it. For these companies, they have their own payment scenarios.

For example, Microsoft has a series of Internet services that allow users to use their Internet services to pay. Just after acquiring X.com and the deep integration of X.com and MSN, Microsoft only needs to follow the WeChat model. .

The same is true for Yahoo. Yahoo also has a large number of Internet scenarios. It can first provide users with payment options based on these Internet scenarios. For example, Yahoo's social space provides some additional value-added services. When consumers of these value-added services use Yahoo to pay, Yahoo completely Certain discounts can be given.

Companies that had no idea before are beginning to seriously consider this matter, let alone companies like Alibaba whose original business and electronic payment business are particularly complementary.

Jack Ma felt from the bottom of his heart that Zhou Xin would not take Alibaba to heart. After all, so many companies were making electronic payment software, and Alibaba was quite insignificant among them.

Moreover, they have not thought about how much market share they want to occupy when doing electronic payment. They just want to get a share of the foreign trade field. They say it is electronic payment, but in reality it is more like supply chain finance.

In the end, Chinese Internet companies will find that finance is the industry that generates the fastest money. Any Internet company with traffic will start to do loan business.

Take 360 ​​as an example. Anti-virus software companies like this are all engaged in finance. The registered capital of 360 Finance has expanded from 1 billion to 5 billion. In less than five years, its revenue has surpassed that of the parent company.

Not to mention Sina and Baidu at the higher echelons, as well as Alibaba and Tencent at the top.

When Alibaba was also gearing up to get a share of the mobile payment market, WeChat launched WeChat Pay.

"With Microsoft announcing its acquisition of Electronic payment companies have investment value.

You must know that Microsoft spent more than 10 billion US dollars to acquire X.com. This made Musk, a once unknown white South African, a real billionaire overnight, and he also suddenly became a After his past remarks against Newman were exposed, some even dubbed him the South African Newman.

At the same time, Microsoft's acquisition of X.com was compared to Time Warner's acquisition of Quora.

Going back to the previous question, why did no Wall Street investment managers pay attention to electronic payment companies in the past? No one paid attention to this field, which is obviously full of imagination and potential, but no one explored its value. This is not obvious. Weird?

You know, Wall Street elites have a lot of value for anything, even if it's in Antarctica, and the next day's flight to Mary Bird Land was filled with Wall Street elites.

It's simple, because when the electronic payment field was still a barren land, there was a behemoth: NewPay.

I believe you can associate it with Newman as soon as you hear this name. Banners or signboards supporting NewPay payment can be seen everywhere in our daily lives. You can see NewPay payment enjoyment when shopping in most offline chain stores. Random instant discounts are such tempting slogans.

Yes, unfortunately, NewPay is related to Newman. It has firmly occupied the No. 1 position in the electronic payment market share from the beginning of its birth, and has hardly encountered any decent opponents from its birth to today.

NewPay is so powerful that Wall Street elites subconsciously believe that all electronic payment companies have no possibility of defeating it. The author once talked about this issue with an investment manager from Merrill Lynch. When NewPay was mentioned, his subconscious reaction was:

‘Who would be crazy to challenge NewPay? This is something that just takes a lot of effort with no results. ’

The investment managers of Merrill Lynch have this attitude, and other elites on Wall Street have a similar attitude. Therefore, NewPay has never faced a decent opponent in a field full of imagination and potential such as electronic payment.

Until the emergence of Microsoft, it seemed that Microsoft was angered by Matrix's acquisition of Apple. It successively acquired Palm and X.com and launched an attack on all mobile Internet-related fields that Newman was involved in.

But can Microsoft really pose a threat to NewPay after acquiring X.com? The author is very skeptical and not optimistic at all.

Because NewPay is so powerful and special.

Let us review how NewPay became a behemoth in the field of electronic payments and how it achieved leapfrog growth.

NewPay was founded in 1998. At that time, Newman was still a small person, similar to Musk. After making a popular video game that summer, "Angry Birds", this game was the first to adopt a verification code after transferring money. The download link method is here, and this method also gave Newman the idea of ​​​​making an electronic payment software for the first time.

With the emergence of Riot Games, NewPay was born as one of the components of Riot Games. At the beginning of its birth, both Silicon Valley and Wall Street focused on Riot Games, and no one realized the significance and value of electronic payments. .

Or maybe some people realize it, but it is much less attractive than Riot games. Because behind Riot Games at that time stood Bill Gates, yes, Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft.

Although the all-out war between Microsoft and Newman has now begun, Bill Gates was Newman's earliest die-hard supporter in the early days. After Bill Gates acquired some shares of Riot Games, Newman invested most of the money he received into NewPay.

The Silicon Valley legend had high hopes for NewPay at the time. However, NewPay's business has been tepid since its birth. It is only a supplementary part of Riot Games. Only game enthusiasts will use NewPay to complete payments. NewPay lacks other payment scenarios besides purchasing games.

This deadlock was not broken until the emergence of Quora paid questions and answers and Quora Golden Election. Quora was one of the greatest Internet inventions in the 1990s. It caused Yahoo to decline rapidly at a speed unimaginable to the outside world.

For the first time, the way for Internet users to obtain knowledge has changed from sharing to asking and answering. This historic change has also completely broadened NewPay’s living space. Quora and NewPay are both companies founded by Newman. Both Quora paid Q\u0026A and Quora Gold Selection only support NewPay online payment.

This allows NewPay's user base to expand from game enthusiasts to the entire group of netizens, and it will increase as the group of netizens increases, because for a new netizen, Quora is definitely the most friendly starting site.

It is precisely because Quora is so successful that NewPay has quickly grown from an unknown small company to become synonymous with electronic payments.

During this period, eBay launched Billpoint and Citibank launched c2it. None of these electronic payment software posed a threat to NewPay. They even disappeared from the electronic payment field in just one year.

Because no one could see the importance of electronic payment at the time, eBay and Amazon opened their payment channels to NewPay without any thought. NewPay, which has a large number of users, grew rapidly after acquiring the payment channels of eBay and Amazon. expansion speed.

We now look back at NewPay's growth data in 1999 and 2000 and we can find that it is growing at a rapid monthly growth rate of more than 50%. The statistical caliber here is the transaction volume that occurs through NewPay.

This prevented other electronic payment software from seeing any hope of surpassing NewPay. By 2001, everyone realized the value of electronic payment.

Especially since Mphone1 has been launched, electronic payment has become popular offline for the first time. Chain restaurant brands such as McDonald's, KFC, and Starbucks have begun to support offline electronic payment. Electronic payment can often enjoy low-price discounts through activities.

Consumer brands hold various promotional activities through NewPay. Not only does NewPay not have to pay them, but they also have to pay advertising and promotion fees to NewPay. At this point, NewPay has achieved an absolute monopoly in the electronic payment field.

I asked the elites on Wall Street, haven’t you ever thought about competing with NewPay in the field of electronic payments? Their unanimous answer is: The rise of NewPay is an accident of the times. It is almost impossible for us to invest in an electronic payment company that can compete with NewPay.

The core logic behind this answer is: I have the money, so why not invest in NewPay.

The reason is simple. Like NewPay in the early days, there is no longer an opportunity to rely on Riot Games and Quora to acquire customers at almost zero cost.

Quora is a rare opportunity. After Quora, users who want to obtain an electronic payment from the market need to spend at least 20 US dollars, and to develop the habit of using fixed electronic payment software, this number must be multiplied by 2.5, which is 50 US dollars. .

A high-frequency user costs $50. More importantly, this number is not fixed. The more users there are, the higher the cost for new users.

Another point is that these users will slowly become NewPay customers in an environment flooded with NewPay.

The Washington Daily conducted a survey when X.com was collecting tokens to redeem prizes. They surveyed more than 2,000 lottery winning users, and more than 30% of them said they would transfer the money to their NewPay account after receiving it. More than 50 users expressed similar thoughts.

NewPay is so strong and domineering in the field of electronic payments. It meets the transaction settlement needs of countless online and mobile commerce innovators around the world. No company in this field can challenge or shake NewPay's position.

Microsoft seems to be in trouble as well, because the aging Microsoft is a burden to X.com's corporate image.

We need to clarify a concept, that is, most users of electronic payment are young people under the age of thirty. In the eyes of these groups, Microsoft is a product of the last century and synonymous with the past. They and electronic payment need The corporate image doesn’t match at all.

X.com is much better than Microsoft, but still much worse than NewPay. After X.com was acquired by Microsoft, when the Washington Daily conducted another investigation, I believe the ratio will be higher, because from the perspective of corporate image, Microsoft has For X.com, it is negative equity.

Of course, the generosity shown by Microsoft's acquisition of X.com has rekindled Wall Street's interest in electronic payments among investment managers.

Why?

Because they realize that they don’t need to defeat NewPay, they just need to have a place in the electronic payment field, and they can wait for a sponsor like Microsoft to acquire it.

It’s not that you have to be successful in this field to be a profitable business. Having customers willing to pay is also a profitable business.

Judging from what we know, there are indeed many Internet companies planning to acquire electronic payment companies to announce their entry into the electronic payment field. As for whether NewPay can still maintain its dominance in the electronic payment field in the face of the encirclement and suppression of so many companies. status?

I don’t know, but I believe Newman”

This is a report by "Red Herring" after Microsoft acquired X.com. The impact of Microsoft's acquisition of X.com is far greater than the launch of WeChat's payment function.

The launch of WeChat’s payment function is not news at all. Apart from users, not many people are aware of this.

On the contrary, Microsoft acquired X.com with a valuation of more than 10 billion US dollars, which was full of many explosive points.

Whether it's Microsoft's all-round attack on Newman, or why X.com is worth more than 10 billion US dollars.

Or maybe X.com is worth more than 10 billion US dollars, how much is NewPay worth?

There are so many things that can be reported. You can publish a piece of news from any angle, which is easy for readers to read.

Public accounts like Silicon Valley Explosion even reported at length on the impact of Microsoft’s acquisition of X.com:

"Microsoft declares war on Newman head-on. The end of Newman is coming!"

"Bill Gates is in control of the situation, Newman is powerless to parry"

"Tell you why X.com will surpass NewPay from ten angles"

From the time Microsoft announced the acquisition to the time the transaction was approved by Nasdaq, Microsoft's stock price rose by more than 40% during the entire period. It can be seen that the capital market's attitude towards this transaction is positive.